After about an hour Mr. Povey at last reappeared. Constance was trying to count silver teaspoons in the parlour.
“He’s in bed now,” said Mr. Povey, with a magnificent attempt to be nonchalant. “You mustn’t go near him.”
“But have you washed him?” Constance whimpered.
“I’ve washed him,” replied the astonishing Mr. Povey.
“What have you done to him?”
“I’ve punished him, of course,” said Mr. Povey, like a god who is above human weaknesses. “What did you expect me to do? Someone had to do it.”
Constance wiped her eyes with the edge of the white apron which she was wearing over her new silk dress. She surrendered; she accepted the situation; she made the best of it. And all the evening was spent in dismally and horribly pretending that their hearts were beating as one. Mr. Povey’s elaborate, cheery kindliness was extremely painful.
They went to bed, and in their bedroom Constance, as she stood close to Samuel, suddenly dropped the pretence, and with eyes and voice of anguish said:
“You must let me look at him.”
They faced each other. For a brief instant Cyril did not exist for Constance. Samuel alone obsessed her, and yet Samuel seemed a strange, unknown man. It was in Constance’s life one of those crises when the human soul seems to be on the very brink of mysterious and disconcerting cognitions, and then, the wave recedes as inexplicably as it surged up.
“Why, of course!” said Mr. Povey, turning away lightly, as though to imply that she was making tragedies out of nothing.
She gave an involuntary gesture of almost childish relief.
Cyril slept calmly. It was a triumph for Mr. Povey.
Constance could not sleep. As she lay darkly awake by her husband, her secret being seemed to be a-quiver with emotion. Not exactly sorrow; not exactly joy; an emotion more elemental than these! A sensation of the intensity of her life in that hour; troubling, anxious, yet not sad! She said that Samuel was quite right, quite right. And then she said that the poor little thing wasn’t yet five years old, and that it was monstrous. The two had to be reconciled. And they never could be reconciled. Always she would be between them, to reconcile them, and to be crushed by their impact. Always she would have to bear the burden of both of them. There could be no ease for her, no surcease from a tremendous preoccupation and responsibility. She could not change Samuel; besides, he was right! And though Cyril was not yet five, she felt that she could not change Cyril either. He was just as unchangeable as a growing plant. The thought of her mother and Sophia did not present itself to her; she felt, however, somewhat as Mrs. Baines had felt on historic occasions; but, being more softly kind, younger, and less chafed by destiny, she was conscious of no bitterness, conscious rather of a solemn blessedness.
IV
Crime
I
“Now, Master Cyril,” Amy protested, “will you leave that fire alone? It’s not you that can mend my fires.”
A boy of nine, great and heavy for his years, with a full face and very short hair, bent over the smoking grate. It was about five minutes to eight on a chilly morning after Easter. Amy, hastily clad in blue, with a rough brown apron, was setting the breakfast table. The boy turned his head, still bending.
“Shut up, Ame,” he replied, smiling. Life being short, he usually called her Ame when they were alone together. “Or I’ll catch you one in the eye with the poker.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Amy. “And you know your mother told you to wash your feet this morning, and you haven’t done. Fine clothes is all very well, but—”
“Who says I haven’t washed my feet?” asked Cyril, guiltily.
Amy’s mention of fine clothes referred to the fact that he was that morning wearing his Sunday suit for the first time on a weekday.
“I say you haven’t,” said Amy.
She was more than three times his age still, but they had been treating each other as intellectual equals for years.
“And how do you know?” asked Cyril, tired of the fire.
“I know,” said Amy.
“Well, you just don’t, then!” said Cyril. “And what about your feet? I should be sorry to see your feet, Ame.”
Amy was excusably annoyed. She tossed her head. “My feet are as clean as yours any day,” she said. “And I shall tell your mother.”
But he would not leave her feet alone, and there ensued one of those endless monotonous altercations on a single theme which occur so often between intellectual equals when one is a young son of the house and the other an established servant who adores him. Refined minds would have found the talk disgusting, but the sentiment of disgust seemed to be unknown to either of the wranglers. At last, when Amy by superior tactics had cornered him, Cyril said suddenly:
“Oh, go to hell!”
Amy banged down the spoon for the bacon gravy. “Now I shall tell your mother. Mark my words, this time I shall tell your mother.”
Cyril felt that in truth he had gone rather far. He was perfectly sure that Amy would not tell his mother. And yet, supposing that by some freak of her nature she did! The consequences would be unutterable; the consequences would more than extinguish his private glory in the use of such a dashing word. So he laughed, a rather silly, giggling laugh, to reassure himself.
“You daren’t,” he said.
“Daren’t I?” she said grimly. “You’ll see. I don’t know where you learn! It fair beats me. But it isn’t Amy Bates as is going to be sworn at. As soon as ever your mother
